The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (top books to read TXT) 📕

recently shot down an astral nave without even sharing the spoils with me. Bad form, don’t you think? Let’s fix the issue — I want the equipment, the surviving modules that you’ve looted.”

“Have you lost your mind? They’re faction and customized — “

“I haven’t finished. Not for free. I’m ready to buy them out at fifty percent of the Bazaar price.”

For the next minute, Tao was thinking hard. I understood him. The total cost of equipment from Keith Borland’s Crabstrocity was more than twenty hundred thousand. However, those items had a pretty narrow field of application and could be sold to only a short list of customers. Selling them at a good price was hard; to do that, one would have to live at the Bazaar.

“I think that could be arranged,” the PROJECT leader finally replied. “For seventy percent. What’s the second condition? Money, again?”

A shadow of disgust marred his delicate features. I gave him a wide smile.

No, not money. It was much simpler.

Chapter 16

MONEY MUST WORK. I didn’t spend too much time with four hundred grand warming my pocket. After solving all issues with the Watchers, I had to move on to the next step and organize my own logistics. I was going to create my own pocket transporting company.

If shipping in Sphere wasn’t profitable, nobody would be doing it — that was the simple idea at the bottom of my plan. There were lots of nuances, and I had to take a few lumps, but in short, that turned out to be true.

Going by the local prices, a common flying vessel took five thousand for one haul. An astral nave took twenty. Basic math: by calculating expenses, I found out that the net cost of such a journey was no more than two or three thousand. In a nutshell, each Eyre-to-Bazaar flight should bring in at least two thousand gold. In my situation, when I needed to take cargo from lots of locations on the northwest of the continent, I could do, at most, two or three runs a day.

I had a mere pittance left of the tidy sum on my account: almost three and a half hundred grand had been spent on buying flying barques and a rig. To equip the ships, I used the help of Keith and his pawns who became a part of my small air fleet. We entered into a three-month contract on the condition I would return the surviving modules of the Crabstrocity to them. It was a win-win arrangement, helping me establish logistics, while Octopus could restore his astral nave to its original state.

I expected to recoup my money in two or three months. It was my first long-term investment in Sphere, a constant flow of income. Factoring in exclusive rights to the resources and loot from the Northerners’ clans, I had wide-ranging prospects. Access to the third account of the Watchers, a free million gold for turnover... I could accumulate a critical mass of goods from the tenants of the Bazaar and try to fight for those market lots by controlling their price. Not immediately, not easily, considering the size and volume of the Bazaar’s market, but I could.

All in all, I was quite pleased with the course of events. At the same time, I watched the consequences of my risky conversation with Tao. “COSMOGOLD,” the shop of my former companion and his main source of income, had suddenly disappeared from the index of the major search engines. It wasn’t offline, but when I opened the store, it almost hung up my computer — nothing worked. The main page said something about technical issues. The symptoms were clear: the site had been hacked. Apparently, it was a hard-hitting attack. On top of that, its address was blacklisted by search engines and payment processors. I wondered what the reason was. Still, finding a fault in any online shop wasn’t impossible; everyone had breaches.

I had been preparing my revenge for a long time, weaving an intricate web of multiple fake accounts, letters, and offers. I knew how COSMOGOLD operated, and luring Nicky wasn’t hard. He loved money and would always use any opportunity to make it.

First, I utilized an old network of shady accounts that I had long since purchased. They belonged to real people who had no idea that they had an online presence of that sort. Some of them had already been used, and some were quietly biding their time.

COSMOGOLD’s mailbox and chatrooms started receiving requests to buy gold and items from Sphere. Not many, but they were frequent enough: almost every day, someone inquired about that subject. Then they got a supply offer, and another one, and....

COSMOGOLD didn’t work with Sphere and its currency. The operators couldn’t offer any help, and all requests were denied. Yet I knew that a new market and a new way to make money were bound to pique Nicky’s interest. He would start looking for suppliers.

All commercial offers sent to his mailbox were fake, of course. I wasn’t going to run afoul of Sphere’s administration and actually sell anything.

When one of the fake suppliers received a request from COSMOGOLD, I knew that the fish finally took the bait. The rest was a technicality. An anonymous buyer inquired about several items, including Tao’s ring, the order was forwarded to the fake supplier and confirmed. The buyer suddenly fell off the radar, but promised to recommend COSMOGOLD to his friend who was “a sure bet” to buy. It was almost time to reel the fish in. All I had to do was to connect the “friend” with Nicky’s online shop.

The ring itself, in the meantime, thanks to Tao, Kesson, and a fake Darknet middleman, was put up for sale at the Bazaar’s auction, ready to be sold to anyone who knew the correct password.

I was sure that Tao would either tell the Sphere’s administration